


The 12th Hour (epilogue)

by Luna Tiger (WintermoonTyger)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, original companions, theoretical 12th Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WintermoonTyger/pseuds/Luna%20Tiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This Doctor keeps his word. (Jack/Ianto±Doctor)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU past **DW series 5** (new Doctor actor announced, whut nao) and to **TW season 2** (because I can work with that easier, and I can't stop denying the truth: they're dead). 
> 
> I wanted to write the story that leads to this, but I realized I never will. Which is a shame, because it's got the right amount of gut-wrenching angst coupled with character insight I love toying with. So instead of getting the whole story, you get its epilogue that's less angsty, but probably just as heartbreaking (I hope).
> 
> In short: if you're really wondering why there's so much exposition and italics, well that's me making up for all that I won't write. It's a stuffed burrito of...babbling.

The Doctor loved a good rocky landing. They were exciting, unpredictable, chaotic, fun, and good for a laugh best kept to himself watching little humans fall over themselves, even after warning them to hang onto something. They were so cute, flailing about and trying not to get themselves tossed against the supports, like monkeys. Very cute. So cute that sometimes, on this side of rare, did he not say a word and let them fend for themselves.

"You could have warned us!" screamed Moira, running hands over her five shades of hair in a desperate attempt to fix whatever had come undone from its nest. The 23rd century had very odd hairstyles, ones the Doctor knew would fade out by the end of the 24th, but it was still considered a dark age in the future history of hairstylists.

Mallory was also upset, her petite chest heaving as she tried to pull herself from a hole in the floor, glaring in his general, vague, pretty-spot-on direction. The Doctor tutted and grabbed her arm to help her out. Mallory might have looked exactly like Moira when she was mad, but the Doctor was willing to help those that didn't criticize his judgments. Out loud.

"I warn you all the time," he chirped. "I figured by now you'd have grown the instinct to grab something at the faintest tremor. Looks funny when it's a false alarm, but makes the real thing less problematic."

The look he got was scathing, an equal expression found on Mallory when he pet her head–like a good pet–and promptly ignored them. The girls were bright, but far too self-centered when it came to the small picture. Their IQs were staggering compared to some, but for all they used it for, the two rather much liked shopping than actually using their brains.

A dark age for hairstylists and a golden age for ingenuity...and teenage rebellion lasting as long as thirty-one years old.

"Well, whatever," Mallory bit, stalking toward the door with Moira quick on her heels. "Hopefully we've come somewhere nice."

"Vrighto," Moira agreed.

The Doctor frowned, and someone may have even labeled it a pout. They just didn't appreciate the little things. None of them had, actually, not since...He shook his head. The girls left the TARDIS with the door wide open, a hot, bitter wind rolling through. And there was something about it, something that tasted...wrong.

He walked leisurely toward the door, and almost ran into Moira as she poked her head back in. She wasn't happy. "Where did you bring us?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her, and gave himself a moment to think. This trip hadn't been of his doing. Whatever Moira was going to harp over was clearly the fault of the TARDIS, but yelling at a machine was never as satisfying as yelling at its pilot, so he didn't tell her that. Instead, he pushed passed her and took his first step into the arid soil.

Nothing.

He'd been to planets with 'nothing' on them before and was always surprised-but-not at what they were hiding. This felt different. The TARDIS had parked not forty feet from a cliff's edge, the drop hovering only a metre from Mallory's toes a paramount of space, like a cut cake of dessert neatly sliced away. The sky was a dark, less-green-and-far-more-blue shade of cerulean, like a curtain of twilight, with no sign of stars. The land a vapid, dun-red, crowned with element-corroded spires, nothing short of outdoor stalagmites, and pepperings of oval, almost reversed pock-marks of black stones strewn across the ground.

But that was just on the opposing end of the drop. The top they were standing on was sheared clean. It was as if a giant razor had skimmed across this surface and entirely missed everything below, it was that featureless. No bumps, no cracks, just an expanse of forever, with the sun's rays sliding off it at a parallel angle. Beyond the cliff was the greenish haze of a sun, its first edge almost entirely set upon their opposite horizon. The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the impending sunset, ignoring Mallory's hollers of frustration, outright questioning why they were brought here if there was _nothing there, hogswarn!_

Really, no creativity in the 23rd century when it came to their curses.

But there was that taste again, as the wind fluttered by. Outside with stronger by a fraction, including an instinctual reaction he preferably embraced from time to time. Very few things ever made him feel that way outright, without a suspect to pin it to, and this time, the Doctor fought the urge. He put a hand to the TARDIS' outer frame, unable to feel the paint on the wood through his leather glove. _Did you sense it?_ he asked, knowing the TARDIS would not reply. _Are we on time?_

Letting the girls vent their words in one ear and out the other, the Doctor gave them a smile once they started having fewer things to complain about. Except he knew not to be happy with this lull. It was about to begin again. "Get your torches, girls," he chimed, beaming with great clarity. "We're going camping."

 

The Doctor remembered the last time he went 'camping'. How close he'd come to being someone's meal, and how only the timely entrance of his current companion had rescued him and the other captives from sharing a fate no one particularly liked. In retrospect, it was all terribly exciting and a clever expedition to learn from. At the time, it _hurt_. But all hurts could be healed.

But try telling that one to the girls. Bumping into each other and shouting, complaining about the path and how narrow it was, complaining that their feet ached and their hands hurt. They'd been barely walking for ten minutes, _down-hill_. So spoiled.

The Doctor ignored them in favor of focusing on the road ahead of them, still visible in the setting light but growing duskier by the second. Roaming unknown planets in the midst of a soon-to-be night was generally a bad idea, but he'd wandered through worse. And if the worst happens, he's got two sacrifices to work with. He grinned privately. Of course he'd never sacrifice them...unless the payoff was good. He'd trade them for a Pendarvial ingrouté platter, with jam. Had to have the jam.

"Where are we _going_ , Doctor?" Moira all but screamed. And the Doctor ached to tell her, but he wasn't sure. Wasn't positive. And wanted to _be_ sure.

The path that hugged the cliff face was unnatural and possibly constructed from the rock, but he wouldn't put it past the planet to have made a natural walkway. They could do that sometimes. There were little jumps to make, here and there, the girls freaking out over one that had been a little wide for their liking, but they made it, hadn't they?

The pressure was growing, and with it, the instinct. It felt tangible, which didn't surprise him. He'd spent a couple years in close proximity to this feeling, never realizing it. Of course it would have a near physical manifestation to accompany its existence.

The landing his feet hit had already been spotted long before they'd set foot on it, and the first thing his spoiled little companions did was fall butt first onto the stone floor. The Doctor wasn't so easily persuaded by the notion, and instead, took a sweeping look about their little niche in the wall.

The first thing that came to mind was ice cream--which sounded pretty good right now; he'd have to treat them after this. Rather, it was like a scoop had come down and curled a chunk of rock away, perfectly smooth. The wind didn't blow around here, which the Doctor had found odd but ultimately relieved. He couldn't have taken it if they were griping about their hair and almost being forced over the edge, on top of it all.

And were the edge of the scoop met stone, all the way at the epicenter of the concave formation, was a hole, for lack of anything else to call it (caves in his mind normally had bigger mouths). And that feeling was propelling him from the hole. And what he was about to do was stupid, reckless, and very, _very_ reminiscent of old times.

"Hallo?"

Because all the smart people announced their presence outside the dragon's den.

The sunlight was skipping over the formation, casting only half its potency into the man-high hole, and his shadow was thrown into the foray. And if nothing would come out, the Doctor would just have to go in himself. Which he knew the girls would not like at all. They'd protested vehemently over walking into the TARDIS their first time, because of its outward size. They liked space and big, personal bubbles. It was a mindset; he didn't blame them.

But nothing stirred, which put to mind nothing was paying attention. Which was borderline rude, but again, the Doctor wasn't surprised. All he had to do was keep talking. It'd be picked up eventually. He hoped it be sooner than later, because he really didn't want to set foot in that hole. Would, but highly preferred not to. Not even for--

The great cumbersome beast of the black made a grand entrance from the curtain of shadow, with little more than a grunt of noise under a mess of mass. No time for an, "Oh bollocks," or anymore past than a impressed look of surprise before suddenly find himself grappling with what he suspected to be the last-- _And only._ \-- surviving creature this planet could handle.

Moira screamed before Mallory even saw it; the Doctor would peg that later when stories were sorted, because all he could hear was the very real sound of his thoughts calculating how long it would take to land at the bottom of the freefall. He had every reason to bother, since that's where he was currently being forced back to and having his survival swiftly threatened. The Doctor didn't think there would be anything left to regenerate if he splattered. His immediate problem, however....

It smelt like death gone cold, rancid, and flushed into the sewers, like a tide of spoiled decomposition in a few acres of rubbish. Nauseating. It felt tattered, diseased, moldy, and hopeless, his hands gripping nothing but grime and grease on garments far out of their warranty, left to rot in the sunlight despite the telltale signs it saw more darkness than sun. Revolting. And a face once capable of so much was caked in blood and spittle and vomit, dirt, dust, and despondence. But above all, hidden behind hair that needed a desperate trim, those eyes were still the same blue they'd been his twenty years ago: glittery, focused, and well equipped to handle a kill. _Alive._

"Doctor!"

That would be Mallory, he'd later learn, but whichever had shrilled it at the time, the Doctor became grateful. Perhaps it was the voice of a distressed woman, maybe it was the name, or maybe it was a distressed woman calling the name that did it, but his delightfully smelly issue just as suddenly _stopped_ , and a brief glance behind him told the Doctor it had been none too soon. But the Doctor didn't chance that it was a solution and not a temporary fix, and addressed the beast in a way he'd left buried since the Doctor turned his back on him: "Jack."

In a firm, solid, and heavy Welsh accent.

"Captain Jack Harkness." Poor broken Torchwood gone lost. A little part took its satisfaction, and another took its fury, and the rest lent upon a long safe-guarded identity, saved for just this occasion, for just _this person_. "You're a mess, sir."

The figure straightened, an action the Doctor felt more under his hands than saw happen before him. Too busy searching behind the greasy locks for a spark that wasn't the cusp of barbarism, a sign of recognition that placed Jack in the present and not, hopefully, stowed away somewhere. This was the hard work of an impossible, never-dying thing: to survive intact forever and ever and ever. The Doctor had had faith in him, when he left 2009. Left behind a team, a settled companion, and a lover that shouldn't have been. His 'friends'. But Time Lords did not have friends who weren't Gallifreyan; they had associates, cohorts, companions, minions, allies. 'Friends' were people who understood what and who you were.

Rose was a 'friend'. Susan was family. Everyone else was...not. Except now Jack was different. Not different that he swam in the abyssal void of creation, a herald of life. Not different because Ianto's emotions still ran through him. Different because this was a Jack--he knew--who lived the life a Time Lord did, albeit without a TARDIS.

Living a paltry hundred years was nothing compared to the vastness that a Time Lord always saw. This Jack may now have been older than _he_ was, linear time-wise. The Doctor would need a date soon.

Jack was...something. And that something was currently staring, working his mouth and making engaged noises meant to be words that sadly cut before the air. The Doctor's hearts squeezed in sympathy, but the emotion wasn't his.

Suddenly he was assaulted, yet again, by muscle and olfactorily as he was swept into a bearhug far beyond his tolerance. "Oi!" he exclaimed, patting Jack awkward on the back, all too keenly aware that the precipice was two feet from ending. "This face goes if you get too exuberant."

But Jack said nothing and kept clinging, his face buried in the Doctor's neck and only breathing. No sobs, no hyperventilating. The Doctor took it as a good sign, and took a moment for himself to bask in the moment, for Ianto's sake. But it was only brief, and far too fleeting, but the sight of Moira wielding her torch like a club was disturbing enough to remind him that there were things to do before the sun set entirely. And it was getting there fast.

The Doctor was tempted to let her go through with her obvious plan, but who knew how Jack would feel about it afterward. He'd read Robinson Crusoe, once upon a time. Castaways got funny, even if they looked sane. And for all of Jack's previous optimistic nature (when he wasn't being dark, moody, and an arse), the Doctor wasn't about to risk Jack's stability.

And so, the Doctor looked at her frankly and raised a palm forward. _Stop._ "For all that he deserves it, Ms. Queiba, I personally believe it would solve little." He turned to Mallory, pressing herself flat against the shelf wall, her lips twisted in abhorrence. It was quite funny, but he didn't laugh. "Head for the TARDIS, girls. We're now four and leaving."

Mallory's eyes bulged, her lips pulled over her teeth in the shape of a distraught 'o', as there was nothing more wrong about what he'd just said. "We're taking him?!" she squeaked.

Moira wore an identical expression. The Doctor beamed, just to get the point across. "You'd think otherwise?"

"But Doctor!" They looked to each other for support, the girls, and chimed in perfect unison, "He's _disgusting_!"

And the last of the Time Lords, with his arms full of in-the-stages-of-slumping impossibility, simply lifted a brow. _And history was just made._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This Doctor keeps his word. Now Jack has his chance.

"Jack."

The darkness was getting brighter, without the surge of energy rushing back into him. He almost cried in relief that a state of consciousness hadn't dragged him over the coals this time, skirting him over the razor edge that his ghost could almost embrace before he was pulled back through the fire by hands he'd finally named " _Rose_ ", some centuries back one fine morning after he'd had acid eat away his chest.

"Sleeping doesn't suit you, remember?"

Jack grunted softly, the warmth under his cheek more inviting than the idea of waking up, as was the petting he could feel, fingers running through his hair unhindered by knots. How long had it been since he'd touched anyone, or anyone touched him back?

 

_"The entire block is shutting itself down. Units are collapsing, suspension is buckling. We're being caved in on, Captain!"_

_"Lor~ri!"_

_"Auto-repair was deliberately knocked offline after that last volley! Shields are failing, power's failing, life support is failing. **We** are failing, Captain!"_

 

He took a sharp inhale and snapped his eyes open.

And began sharing eye contact with two identical faces peering at him in wonder from a few feet away, from the far edge of a horizon he could only assume was a mattress--it certainly felt like one as he shifted minutely. One of them had the most delighted look on her face. Jack couldn't stop his charm from kicking on, and he grinned what he knew was a smile that had once launched a thousand ships, and then pinned it on Helen of Troy. "Ladies."

The delighted one simpered; her facial twin blushed like a virgin, and he knew she wasn't.

"That's enough sight-seeing, you two," came that disembodied voice from above, and Jack flinched under the vicious need to look up. "Out now. The grown-ups need to talk."

Those looks of adoration turned to honest scowls, and the blushing one acquiesced first, pushing herself up to stand and turn. The delighted one was less easy to corral by direction, and there was a warning in the voice from above. "Moira."

"We're not children," she growled, and finally followed the same motions as the other, standing and turning for the door. "You will tell us when you're done, Doctor." She left no room for argument--a twofold demand--as she stormed out, the door shutting fast like the second shoe dropping.

The fingers only stopped to curl around a couple locks, unfazed by the ultimatum. "Do you still go by 'Jack Harkness', Captain?"

He almost laughed, a bubble that drowned in misery and escaped like a nigh-silent sob. This entire scenario was far too surreal. "There was no time or place to change it," he murmured, still not daring to move from how he lay. His voice was rough, sore. He grimaced inwardly, but let his awe show when a glass of water floated into his vision. It was gone in seconds as Jack drank, some of it spilling onto the bed sheets. He continued as the water settled joyously in his stomach. "People just kept coming."

A pause, then: "Look at me, then."

Jack didn't, not at first. The voice had the wrong accent, and he remembered seeing that face against the backdrop of Halliwall's diminishing daylight before his own midnight gave him a swift kick in the head, coupled with the fear he'd died _yet again_ in the four years he'd been stranded on the planet, in the Doctor's arms no less. He'd had faith in the Doctor's parting words almost two thousand years ago, on and off if he was honest, but the tenure of being stranded on the rock, with the knowledge of a shipwreck and twenty-seven corpses now skull and bone ever present in his mind, that faith was tested.

So he tilted his head a faction, barely shifting from his side, and finally took an unobstructed view of the monster who left him behind a second time. "What took you so long?"

Ianto had a penchant for smiles that sometimes looked forced, even when he wanted to mean them. One of those smiles marred Ianto's face now, with sad eyes to compliment it. "We hit a hitch and drifted a little bit to the left. A half of a second for us, three more years for you, I'd wager."

Jack nodded, and then got down to the important stuff. "You cut my hair."

"The girls were more than happy to do it."

"And I'm naked."

"The very reason why they were happy in the first place. Even the handsome time agent hero is susceptible to the elements of body function, even you with 51st century biology. They wouldn't touch you before we started bathing you." The smile turned knowing. "Couldn't keep their hands off before we were done."

Jack returned the grin half-heartily, while trying not to complain too much to himself for missing out on such an exercise. He just had to pass out, hadn't he? "Your twins got names?"

"Moira and Mallory Queiba, and I'm sure they're at your service."

The immortal hmmed and closed his eyes again. His head was resting on the Doctor's thigh, clothed just like the rest of him in material that weren't the fibers of his old attire. At least he was wearing red; that felt right. "We haven't left yet, have we?"

"No," the Doctor assured him. "We leave at your say so, in case you have things from your hovel you want to collect."

He nodded and concentrated now on the fingers still at his hair, carding and parting. There were a couple things he could think of that he may or may not have wanted to keep, the instrument that had carved his 'hovel' among them, despite it being powerless from the exertion. A product of the Rift, 2193. A token of remembrance, after Torchwood lapsed into nothing. Disintegrated stone to carve that path, that niche, that worthless hole-in-the-wall. It hadn't made a difference in his survivability chance; it would always be a green bar across, one hundred percent survival, a 'flawless victory', no matter how many times he died.

He survived the short stint in the radiation chamber at the end of time, cells regenerating what was lost seamlessly, painlessly. Turns out the longest Jack's body could survive without water was a week, twice the human average even for his century, but then his body would rehydrate once he revived. And he'd wait, bored to death, waiting for death to come again.

Now, more or less safe and sound, Jack didn't want to get up. He didn't want to be thinking either. The day the Doctor walked off the Plass, leaving behind not only Torchwood but his late companion too, had dragged into one long session of touch-and-go. It felt like they needed forceps to pry the entire story from Donovan's lips, but Donovan was malleable to the Doctor's moods, even after being separated from him for so long. The Time Lord's less than docile temperament toward the memories he'd acquired as Ianto felt like a punch to the gut, a kick to the groin, a squeeze of the throat, and a twist to the heart. And the Doctor had probably over-reacted anyway, acting all high and mighty as if he were the one--and the _only_ one--wronged.

Witnessing the Doctor's eleventh regeneration had been devastating in more ways than one. From a pale, gaunt, dark-haired man with somber brown eyes to a vaguely-pale black-haired man with crystal blue eyes, with his team minus Ianto only a step behind him watching the very same scene unfold before them. In shock, one of them ( _Martha._ ) had gotten out half of Ianto's name before Jack cut her off with a wave of his arm and a hiss. There were _rules_ , after all.

They couldn't cut into the Doctor's timeline. And the stone in Jack's gut sank deeper, the desperation to return to their own time and place overwhelming. This was something to be afraid for. They left Ianto alone--

 

_"I wouldn't take a step inside the TARDIS even if he kidnapped my mother, Jack."_

_"So, what, you're going to stay?"_

_"Someone has to. Given the Doctor's track record with returning people **in a timely fashion** , I'm not banking on seeing the TARDIS five minutes after you leave. But Jack, if he doesn't get you back within about a week, I'm taking the liberty of hiring new staff and subsequently firing you all."_

_"You can't do that, Ianto."_

_"Watch me, sir, just watch me."_

 

\--and returned _just in time_ for Ianto to disappear into the fold of the Doctor's universal persona, with a snap of a watch and the golden glow just fading away off his person. And Donovan Lewis, the companion the Doctor had hiding in the wings of U.N.I.T. for six years, had been nothing short of a herald, trumpeting his master's return.

Only to be told to stay and continue his life in this era, as the member of U.N.I.T. he'd become. It seemed the only piece of the Doctor's life he wanted to carry beyond this turning point was the metal-faced lizard that curled itself around the Doctor like a bandolier, from shoulder to hip like an Ouroboros dragon. 'Bones' Donovan had called it.

But that was after the Doctor's tirade of conduct, chance, and consequence, all in the tones of righteous anger. And none of it in Ianto's accent. So much had the Doctor covered, that only the Doctor would be angry about, for only the Doctor would care about. And Jack had been left speechless, like a child under their parent's ire and scorn. The Doctor called him out on things, important things, and even got in a sinking left hook.

 

_"Is there anything else I'm missing?! Is there anything left that you would care to get out into the open?!"_

_"I--"_

_"Stop right there, Jack Harkness. Don't you, don't you **dare** say those words! You had all that time to say them. You haven't the **right** to now. Keep them to your sodding self."_

 

It felt like the book closing, that moment, with the latch on it sealing and resting itself on the one shelf always out of reach. But maybe it hadn't found its way up that far, once the Doctor made his final peace far contrasting his initial standing.

 

_"D'ong giin to'n...d'ol naevas troka nii maphkatti beyn."_

_You'll find me again...when you're all alone and tired._

The last thing the Doctor said. Words he clung to and–at times–reviled. The last shred of hope he had of...well, no one ever said Jack was entirely selfless. There was more than one thing he needed to get off his chest, rehearsed in his head for so long, he wouldn't be blown aside. So Jack shifted to lay on his back, to look straight at the Doctor without craning his neck; the Doctor's hand moved with the motion, the petting never stopping. "I thought about what you asked before you left."

\- e - y - e - s -

The Doctor frowned in remembrance. He'd demanded plenty of answers he hadn't wanted and gladly never got. What one thing Jack was talking about, the Doctor wasn't quite sure of...but he wasn't about the appear less than clever or omnipotent. "And what did you decide?"

"That if I saw you again–and mind, I was really feeling that 'if' bit–and you hadn't regenerated already--" Inhale. "--that I would call you Ianto, and damn what you thought of it. You're Ianto. You might not act like him, but you..." The Doctor had pursed his lips together, no longer frowning, but not smiling either. "He's in there, isn't he?"

A loaded question if there ever was one, the Doctor surmised, and felt Jack was entitled to an answer. Except how do you properly explain the onrush of a flooding persona temporarily subduing a far milder one, followed by the eventual, partial mutual cohabitation of two distinct personalities within one body without it being classified as a mental disorder?

"Time Lords shouldn't be out of their skins for too long a time," the Doctor whispered. "Sometimes, too long and it starts to make that second life almost permanent, a natural split conscience, though as you've seen, a Time Lord's persona is immediately dominate for a short time. ...When I was with Martha, after Rose, I adopted a human form for a month or two, to wait out my pursuers. Afterward I told someone that--" He licked his lips subtly. "--that the person I'd been was still inside. Fragments; I could adopt that personality, those traits if I wanted, make myself act something more human for her benefit, if she agreed to travel with me.

"This isn't the same. The Doctor I was before I used the chameleon arch again is only half the person I am now. It's a merger, not an absorption."

Jack nodded once, but did he really understand? "It won't be like that, when you regenerate."

The Doctor smiled–perhaps he did?–and Jack suddenly looked so young, even when the grey at his temples was strikingly apparent. He was good at that, under the right presets. "No. I'll be reborn anew, just as always." And just for the moment, he adopted the Welsh. "I'm not your Doctor, Jack; he died right after leaving Satellite Five. But I can be your Ianto, with a few odd quirks that might take time getting used to."

And he meant it. Ianto might have labored quietly in his mind for twenty years, but he still existed. He still cried and cursed himself, damning both halves when the Doctor had never previously damned himself for anything. He sometimes wanted coffee over tea, ever so critical over its satisfaction to the palate. Once in a rare while, he dreamed the kind of dream no self-respecting Time Lord was ever overly promiscuous enough to have; a human influence of a specific nature.

The Doctor could still feel the thrum of Jack's Fixed Point status under his hands and thigh, 'an impossible thing'. Jack's Doctor had known, but had run for more than just his fear of Jack, but also for his fear _for_ Rose. Martha and Donna's Doctor was less than truly sympathetic to Jack, seeing him in only a halved vision: memories of another lifetime that he was still in control of. That Doctor hadn't entirely had the affection for Jack that the previous version had (even if his ninth face had a poor way of showing it).

Regeneration kicked all previously held perspectives into whack, a muted perception of all previous feelings, much like a perception filter: seen, but not registered. The Doctor could now look back on Rose without a pang of utter loss to accompany it, as his tenth face had. In contrast, his eleventh face had treated her memory so flippantly and almost acted like the company he kept could have been better: never living up to snuff, always wrong, always getting into trouble, never his fault, always had to be the Big Damn Hero while still trying to run away.

It was just an adjustment to a skewed personality, that self removal. It saved the mind, having to endure so long.

The human element in him now, it made things taste different. He knew what his self had been before the humanization; like all his incarnations, he'd always held a fond respect for humans, like a parent over a toddler. He would be their shepherd, always. Now it was a kinship and an alienation. He felt proud to be one of them, and at the same time, knew he wasn't, but couldn't stop relating. He was a tainted incarnation, unable to reign as 'better' than the flock but was still hiding it well from the girls. 

Jack was something else. As a Time Lord, the Doctor was a coward. As a human, he was...willing to be brave, for his Captain. He kept Ianto in one piece, fiasco after mind-shattering fiasco, the true lost sheep. The Doctor was part human; that part needed a shepherd, perhaps. A force the Doctor to look up to as a human, to fuel some inspiration to the Time Lord.

But the Doctor wasn't selfish enough to keep him. He kept his promise: he found Jack when he was alone, but was he tired? "So how often can I expect to be attacked by you, sir?"

Jack blinked, bemused by the sudden derailing of the current conversation. "Eh?"

"Normally only madmen come charging out of their hovels to wrestle perfectly good strangers off the sides of cliffs." The Doctor frowned a little. "How personal was it, Jack?"

Those blue eyes closed and Jack shifted about some. Ianto recognized the display immediately, and the Doctor patted himself on the back. This wasn't something Jack wanted to get into. "Do you know how long it takes me to die of dehydration?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. What did that have to do with anything?

"Average week; I can span it to nine or ten days if I don't move, and it drops to four if I bother to exert myself." Jack opened his eyes. "And then my body rehydrates when I revive. I died two hundred and fourteen times in four years."

"Been here since 3856 then, yeah?"

Jack lifted his wrist in a heart beat's time and pouted when he realized the wristband was gone. "Cheat."

The Doctor jerked his head to the side, behind Jack's line of sight. "It's on the bedside. You were saying?"

The arm dropped like a stone. "I was alone, a condition you set, and all I did was think back to what you said -- it's not the sort of declaration you forget, and I began to believe at times you said it just to pacify me, so you could run off without worry of me flagging you down again, waiting for _you_ to come to _me_."

The hand finally stopped its petting, choosing to relocate itself on Jack's jaw, fingers curling under his chin and palm against his cheek. The Doctor shook his head. "I was angry. I felt wronged, belittled, and tricked. Ianto's passion heightened my own, since I wasn't entirely in control yet. But I'd seen your loneliness, Jack, from Ianto's eyes, and at that moment, I couldn't be cold to you. Not when part of me ached to soothe it away. You went back for the team. You refused the Doctor and returned to the obligations you took up, and to the people you loved. I owed you that same courtesy...and Ianto helped. You left him, I know why you left him, he knew why you left him, what kept you, and why you changed for his sake. Think of it as...I didn't want to be the Doctor who left you without hope, when the human part of me loved you." He managed a crooked smile. "Now why did you get all beasty on me?"

Jack coughed and looked away. "I have pretty crappy cameras hooked up along the path. Saw you. Saw your twins. You...looked like Fashan Totalitarians."

"Ah." Though why the Fashan Totalitarians would be anywhere near this planet was beyond the Doctor's understanding, Jack rather did have a reason to be wary. "Do we really look that overdressed?"

"You're always overdressed." And there it was, his patent cheeky grin, bright as sunshine to cover whatever perverse thoughts ran through his mind.

The Doctor tutted. "None of that. I might have you in a bed, Captain, but I'm perfectly capable of kicking you out of it."

"But I'm naked."

"And I'm sure the girls wouldn't mind in the least if you lost the covers."

Pause. "What are they, anyway? Korren hybrids?"

"Close!" The Doctor beamed. "They're from 2283."

Jack wrinkled his nose in distaste. Of course Jack Harkness would have an opinion about the era. But it seemed as good a place as any to start getting about with the rest of their time. However, as the Doctor began to slide off the bed, Jack's head hit the mattress at the same time his hands shot up and caught the Doctor by the nape.

"There'd been a time," Jack murmured, "when you never left my bed without kissing me."

 

_"I should make that a requirement."_

_"As you wish, sir."_

_"Oh no you don't, Mr. Jones. If you're going to kiss me at any time, you're going to do it because you want to and not because I put it on your regiment."_

_"Very well. The first kiss will be obligatory. The rest that follow will be because I really, really want to."_

_"...I don't see words being put to action."_

_"And give you a reason to start the day late? Never in your dreams."_

 

The Doctor's chest constricted, swallowing painfully, remembering. How he had: vigorously, languidly, or casually, always in the privacy of the covers. Always the small and telling hint that Ianto cared just a little beyond the sex, among others. Never sure if Jack had known or not, never knew if Jack had his own way of showing the same thing, if he was more than a warm convenience. "I don't think we should."

Jack was a person who needed very little to get his own way: a smile, a wink, a gun to the head. 'No' meant 'find another way' in his dictionary, 'possibly destructive with loud explosions' or more practically, 'get someone to play dress-up and be my undercover extension'. But he listened to the Doctor; he _obeyed_ the Doctor, even against Jack's 'better' judgment. Nine point five times out of ten, the Doctor's word was Law to him. But the Doctor wasn't quite himself anymore, not until his next regeneration to purge this identity clean. The Doctor's 'no' was anchored with Ianto's resolve...and Jack had liked pushing that.

It was easy to see where this would go, if they let it.

Jack frowned with a touch of pout, but he didn't let go. He also didn't pull the Doctor down to him or twist up to kneel, as the Doctor had expected of him. "You didn't let me tell you, either."

The Doctor hadn't forgotten, and he closed his eyes to relive that one painful moment. "Who would you have been saying it to, Jack?" he admonished gently. "And were you only saying it because it was safe to, or because you thought it might counteract the entire beforehand?"

"I wanted to tell him on the Game Station," Jack said, his voice steady. "Him and Rose the very same words. My last act of cowardice before I played the martyr was my silence."

"You said it in your kiss," the Doctor reminded him, and duly ignored Betty Everett's lovely voice echoing almost the same line. "Be you a coward or a hero, it still takes guts to go past the flirting and the cute little quips." He tried not to think that he was talking from experience.

"But that's not enough." Jack pursed his lips, searching an upside down visage for something the Doctor wasn't certain of. "That might be okay for people you weren't involved with, but for the ones you are?"

His chest constricted itself again. _You can't avoid this now. Let him._ "Tell me you were 'involved' with other people, Jack. Tell me there were others, that you _told_. That you didn't keep dangling on a thread because you were so bloody afraid to open up."

The stricken expression was heartbreaking, even more so when Jack whispered thickly, "Yes."

A number of faceless people zipped through his imagination, flooding him with the relief that Jack had learned something that day, something that spared the emotional pain of a number of his lovers, and an anguish for the devastation it must have cost Jack each time he lost one.

"The Doctor I loved inexplicably is gone," continued Jack. "The one I met next was fun and I admired him, but he wasn't _him_. Yeah, I was confused at the time, and I wanted to overlap it all but..." His fingers tightened on the Doctor's nape. "It's not because you're the Doctor. I fell for a Welshman who loved his coffee, his girlfriend, and his bloody stopwatches."

The Doctor smiled sadly. "You've probably forgotten so much too."

Jack returned it. "Less than I could have, but that's more than I ever hoped to."

The pressure against his skin became acute in his mind, reminding him what he didn't want to happen. Actually, what _shouldn't_ happen, but there was decidingly little that resisted innate impulse. Be it his excuse if asked, bowing down to the whim of the universe, as the Doctor followed that pressure downwards to unexpected but not unwelcoming lips. A kiss unhindered by urgency, familiar despite the reversed angle, and the gentle push at the last obstacle keeping Jack from saying what he hadn't in eighteen-hundred fifty-one years:

"I loved you, Ianto Jones."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This Doctor keeps his word. Now it's time to start anew.

Jack almost felt a privilege of sorts, watching the Doctor sift around his scavenged things. How many people could claim they had been in the company of more than two incarnations of the roguish Time Lord? _His_ Doctor had been all he had known for a good part of his life until he met the next face of the line-up; they were two entirely different personalities with the one same tang that left an undeniable impression: both were cut from the same cloth.

And this Doctor, his Time Lord/Tea-boy trail mix, had that tang as well. It mirrored his predecessors in the way he spoke, and how he spoke of them, somehow different between faces but simply...him.

Of course, now he understood what Sarah Jane had said about the Doctor having once been eccentric and flamboyantly attired. His Doctor had not been (oh how the leather looked on that man), the succeeding version had been...well, he only appeared well dressed until you saw his shoes and wondered what back-lot tramp alley he was coughed up from. Jack had begun to wonder what this Doctor had been like, personally and visually before donning Ianto's suit, and if any of the posh wear had somehow managed influenced the fashion monstrosity he was wearing.

The dress coat was circa mid-19th century, tucked like a waistcoat but sturdier, cut from pinkish-red suede (of all material, of all the shades), and had curving tails to the knees. Had the rest of his outfit been similar to the time period, Jack wouldn't have been tempted to call him a Frankenstein of time. The rest was just a black tee and pale beige cargo pants teeming with pockets Jack already joked were bigger on the inside. One leather glove on the left hand, simple black trainers, and metal-rimmed rider goggles dangling from around his neck.

He painted an odd picture of mishmash, but if the universe could produce a creature capable of pulling off both formal and so-informal-it-is-almost-trashy-gaudy wear, this man was it; who was Jack to criticize? The Doctor made it doable. _Ianto_ made it doable.

"I'm surprised you were even able to hook half this stuff up to the hetherary batterix." The Doctor looked back at him. "How long did it take?"

"Nine, ten months." Jack grinned for the Time Lord's benefit. "It wasn't like I had to worry about much else."

The Doctor faced forward again and Jack's face masked over. "Wireless receptors, grainy picture-- oh, Moira's coming back down."

Jack was expecting Mallory to follow shortly after--they never seemed far from each other--but no second body was forthcoming, even as Moira hit the third monitor of five. "I did the best I could."

"Which is impressive that it only took you that long." The Doctor stood up from his crouch and spun on his heels with a sober look. "Anything else you want brought up?"

There was not much left to begin with. What Jack had salvaged was not comparable to what had been left behind, not even a tenth of the equipment they had had. Half was unrepairable, and the rest was too huge and integrated into each other to work outside the ship. "Few odds and ends." He swept his arm about the small space, which had grown slightly bigger with the removal of several things. "I can get them myself."

Which was silent, secret code for: _"I don't want you to see. Not yet."_

The Doctor nodded, ambiguous to whether he caught what wasn't said or not. "What about your ship?"

"No." No, he did not want to go back there. It was a scorched ruin now, deliberately so. The soil was too compact to crack and too dry to hold; erosion was this planet's natural environmental state, and he'd used it. Burned his crewmates--and one lover--properly and let nature take its due course. The half-year wind season for the top surface was due in a week, and if last year's had not blown the remnants to fragments of metal and calcium, this year's surely would. "There's nothing there."

"If you feel that way." One of the things Jack had not prepared for was having to share this space with two people. The way Jack had fashioned had really only been meant for himself with little room to spare (which meant he wanted to go as deep as possible while conserving energy in his nameless tool, but Jack only said it like that to himself). And no amount of extra space caused from missing tech could prevent the inevitable when more than two occupied the tunnel and the one deeper in wanted out.

Jack flattened himself up against the stone as manly as he could, but the effort barely changed what space was left open for the Doctor to squeeze through. At the first brush, Jack was suddenly very sure he should have filed out first. Even after last night, when the Doctor had explained to the girls who Jack was (in vague detail, as he was always wont) and pacified Moira with a reason why he had had Jack's head in his lap, only for the two of them to talk some more without the girls, the ground they walked on was still sketchy. It would never be whole again, if Jack really thought about it (and he already had), and even something as casual as this felt awkward.

Doctor. Ianto. Doctor. Ianto.

Matters only turned worsebettercomplicated when the Doctor stopped midway between them to _look_ at Jack while no berth of space remained between them. Even here, with the Doctor pressed up against him, he remained infallible for all the universe to fear, not a trace of his age on the surface like when there was penultimate doom thereabouts.

Jack itched. To move away, to press back deliberately, to make a joke. He had made peace with the idea of unknowingly having the Doctor under his roof at some point (it took considerably longer to come to terms he had been sleeping with him, however), but the static in the air around them brimmed thick with the past. And it wasn't like in the TARDIS.

"Sorry," murmured the Doctor.

An acknowledgment was not forthcoming, but instead Jack's hand raised to hook a finger into the goggles dangling from his throat. With a tug, and not looking the Doctor in the eye, he said, "I've been meaning to ask about these."

The Doctor looked down as well, as though confused about what could possibly be draped dashingly across the hollow of his throat. "Oh that. It's a gift of sorts," he admitted. "Never going to regret getting marooned on a windy desert planet again."

Jack raised his eyes in time with the Doctor, the Doctor catching his gaze before he could avert it. "I've taken people out of their time and carted them around the entire cosmos," the Doctor explained unneedingly; Jack vaguely knew this bit. "And then there were the ones I never looked twice at. Perfectly good people, very pleasant. I left them where they were, and it would only cross my mind to pick up some people and not others. I've taken people with me that I didn't want to, only because others asked. A few I've regretted taking on, one or two I've regretted not keeping, when I realize they're worth something in the heart.

"You can call me 'Ianto', Jack, but you need to remember this: I didn't take the girl who lead me through the sands of Jargha Teppenhaim Minnick. I didn't take her because I didn't think to take her, even though I shared two adventures with her on her homeworld. It's where Ianto and I differ. He would have seen her desire to come with me. I ignored it entirely. Don't get us confused, Jack."

"Never." And he meant it, in that moment. Though his own conviction was betrayed when the hand slipping away from the goggles reached up instead of falling down. The Doctor did him the privilege of choosing now not to turn away, let alone leave, as Jack let a single knuckle caress down his cheek.

The skin was soft, and Jack recalled a dozen lovers at once that were all buried in time. And he could lose this one just as easily, he knew. The Doctor before him now was the last remaining artifact of his Torchwood, in the narrow scope of things. A timeless piece that would not last forever; but maybe perhaps, a second chance?

"So," he said conversationally, "why the twins then? What did they do?"

Jack's hand did not move and neither did the Doctor's cheek as he spoke with much exasperation toward his companions. "There was this convention in their time that I found myself attending. Ever hear of the Rundel Trap Trade?"

Jack had been in China during the twenty-third century. "Not off-hand."

"Much like the name sounds, it's all about the bigger, better trap. Mouse traps, ant traps, small animals, big animals, behemoth animals, flying traps, mechina traps, computer viral traps, personal home traps, bank traps, and the odd handcuff or twenty." Jack grinned cheekily. The Doctor did not chastise him. "I wound up cracking each one that got in my way, had a high class menage of suits chasing me down, thinking I'd some special device--sonic screwdriver count? Probably--and the whole time, I was stuck with Moira by the finger. She and Mallory were there demonstrating their reinvented Chinese finger traps."

The image startled him; Jack laughed heartily, and it was a sound he hadn't made in years. Even to him, it sounded rusted. "I think..." he tried, then cleared his throat and tried again. "I think I need an encore of that occasion?"

The Doctor's expression was suffering. "Do you know what it's like with that girl when you don't know her? It's quite like it is now, except she makes fewer demands. Being trapped by the finger with her is an experience I will never repeat if I can help it."

"So why take them?"

"You learn a lot about a person when your fingers are stuck together and you're running from security. She's brilliant; they both are. ...And I've never had twins before. It seemed like the time."

"Doctor!"

Both snapped their heads toward the entrance, Moira's cry clear. She had booked it down the side of the cliff, if timing was anything. Jack sighed audibly at the interruption; the Doctor finished passing past him, and Jack could only follow.

Moira stood in the center of the landing, not too close to the edge lest she fall and not too close to the cave lest it mess up her green-and-blue hair by proximity. Hands on her hips, one hip cocked up, and a scowl to win a man's favor: Jack suspected this was the sort of attitude the Doctor suffered through all day long. "We stowed his last kit, we tweaked the calcium rods, oiled the dulfer iconogram, and hacked together the HS4-9000 and a Playstation 2 we found in the back. Are we ready to go **yet**?"

"Another two hours. Maybe less," the Doctor said casually, giving Jack a side-long glance. Jack dipped his chin a fraction, a thank-you. The Doctor stepped away from him to lead Moira back upward, her face falling into pure dismay as she suddenly realized she had to go back up so _soon_.

Jack grinned effortlessly when their backs were turned. But right before their feet touched the path, he called, "Ianto."

So solid was that one word on his tongue, it resonated off the walls and into the open drop, like a word of power. Both the Doctor and Moira looked at him, Moira confused, and the Doctor expectant.

" _D'ol eesis kanka nopoi ro magtakach._ "

The Doctor's sudden smile was great, stretching the corners of his mouth to a point where it didn't look fake. He said nothing in return, instead continued to lead Moira back to the TARDIS, while Jack's ears caught her asking, "What did he say to you?"

"Something about a beach in Joisi...."

Jack about-faced back into his hovel. Two hours, more than enough time to make the one last trip to the TARDIS Jack had implied earlier. But there was more to it. Two hours was enough to say his last peace before turning his back on this rock forever. He had time to deliver one more full-fledged passage ceremony for his lost crew, apart of the evolved religion humans had adopted as of the 39th century. Still not religious himself, he owed it to them.

But now, he would do it with a smile of his own.

_You're still a fine piece of work._


End file.
